


wake from death, return to life

by Sailor Doom (Avilon)



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: AU - everyone died, Bittersweet, Dead Friends, F/M, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort, Mix of Manga and Anime Canon, bisexual Kunzite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:51:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avilon/pseuds/Sailor%20Doom
Summary: She makes it to the portal, to the dimensional rift that links the North Pole to Tokyo, just in time. Exhaustion surges over her, her senshi uniform fades and she collapses.Usagi Tsukino, known to the world as Sailormoon, wakes in the hospital three weeks later. She wishes she had died along with her friends.





	wake from death, return to life

A cold wind blows through her hair as she lets the body of her comrade fall to the snow below. The dust settles. The battlefield is silent except for the whistling of the wind. She forces herself to stand. To walk. To leave her friends behind. She knows she has to make it to the portal before it closes as her friend’s voice echoes in her memory.

“You have to go on. For us. For him. For her.”

She makes it to the portal, to the dimensional rift that links the North Pole to Tokyo, just in time. She turns back to where her friends lay and considers running back to them, but decides against it as she falls through the portal, alone, moments before it dissipates. Exhaustion surges over her, her senshi uniform fades and she collapses.

Usagi Tsukino, known to the world as Sailormoon, wakes in the hospital three weeks later. She wishes she had died along with her friends.

 

\- -

 

Days pass to weeks to months to years and Usagi spends fifteen of them going through the motions of life. High School, university, medical school, job. It’s not her path. It’s Ami’s path, Mamoru’s path. But they’re not around and she is, so it’s become her path. She can’t say she doesn’t enjoy aspects of it, but it is not what she would have chosen.

Every day is a repetition of the day before: babies born, sick children, injured children, and on the worst days, dying children. She is often praised for her handling of the painful situations with a cool collected constitution, though she doesn’t truly deserve it. Truth is, she feels nearly nothing. She hasn’t felt anything for close to twenty years.

 

\- -

 

_“She doesn’t smile,” one mother says._

_“Does she need to smile to save your child?” another replies._

_“She seems cold.”_

_“Does she have to be warm to know what’s wrong with your child?”_

_No one ever questions that Usagi is not good at her job._

 

\- -

 

Usagi finishes her Friday shift and leaves, even with young Nurse Tomoe attempting to let her know that a man, probably a young father, was asking for her. There is an empty, lonely apartment that calls to her, with books to be read at home and cats to speak with and nothing at the hospital that can’t be taken care of on Monday morning. It’s not that Usagi doesn’t care about the father.

Actually it is. She cares about her patients. Their parents come as a second thought.

She heads towards her empty apartment, though she makes a quick stop at a convenience store to grab a cup ramen. The strangely cold September air has begun to spring forth the memories and feelings and emotions that Usagi keeps locked tightly away from seeing the light of day. The warmth of a store, and food often can keep them suppressed. She pays for her noodles and gives the storekeeper a slight bow.

She hasn’t smiled in fifteen years.

 

\- -

 

_Usagi runs up to her room to study and complete her homework, while her mother sets the kitchen table. Ikuko feeds Luna and Artemis before she returns to the dinner on the stove._

_“I worry, Luna,” Ikuko says absentmindedly. “She throws herself into her school work. She never has friends over, anymore. Her grades are great, but…”_

_Ikuko doesn’t finish, realizing that she’s talking to the cat again. But Luna understands. Both she and Ikuko would trade Usagi’s newfound study habits if she would just be happy again._

 

\- -

 

The noodles finish heating, and Usagi turns to head out of the store, when her eye catches a tall, white haired man walking by the window. He doesn't see her. He wouldn’t recognize her if he did, she thinks, but she knows him. She can never forget that hair, that face.

Kunzite.

The last of the Shitennou.

Beryl’s elite general.

Usagi has always assumed that Kunzite died alone, deep in the dark, murky depths of the Dark Kingdom. Disappointment wells up in her at this revelation.

Her noodles are forgotten on the counter as she hurries to follow the man. Duty calls. She is Sailormoon, even if she hasn’t transformed in years, and he is the last general of the Dark Kingdom, even if he is dressed as a normal human. She follows him through the crowd as he heads toward a nearby apartment building. She reflexively reaches to her chest where her brooch once sat, only to remember that she has not worn it since she was in University. She picks up her speed to catch him, but it’s too late as he enters the building and disappears.

She curses herself for losing him, even as more questions arise. How, why is he alive? What is he doing, planning? And how has she managed to avoid seeing him for all these years? She knows what she must do. She knows she has to find him, and kill him, whether in civilian form or as Sailormoon.

 

\- -

 

_“How long was I out Luna?” Usagi asks. “What did I miss?”_

_“Three weeks,” the black cat answers her. Usagi should have known this from the hospital, but the cat assumes that Usagi is still having trouble with her memory. “As for what you missed, there was plenty of school and your friends…”_

_“I meant youma,” the lunar soldier’s voice is cold and stark, all business._

_It’s Artemis’s turn to answer her. “There were reports, but we never saw any.”_

_Usagi nods but says nothing more, her expression as distant as D-point._

\- -

She prepares for war with Kunzite, which means strategy. Means reconnaissance. Means secrets. During the day, she follows him, disguised by the pen she hasn’t used in years. She follows him from his apartment to the law office where he works, from work to karaoke, to the bar and back home. At night, she trains her body to fighting shape. If she has time before work, she lists ways to kill him.

When the cats ask what she is up to, she gives them an excuse and then asks not to be disturbed. She’ll tell them when it’s over.

Usagi is able to sneak into his apartment building and follow him in the elevator to his floor. When his keys fall to the ground, she grabs them and returns them, quickly taking note of his apartment number. While he is at work the following day, she breaks in, if one can call opening an unlocked door breaking in. She gets a sense of the layout, and practices how she will make her way to his bedroom without making a sound to kill Kunzite at his weakest point. In theory it should be easy, but something eats at Usagi. It seems cowardly to kill a man in his bed, and she has never been a coward.

But Kunzite is a powerful general. And she won’t risk a fight with him.

Usagi throws open the door to Kunzite’s bedroom, almost expecting to find a portal to the Dark Kingdom, instead finding a mostly barren room filled with light as the two outermost walls are merely windows that allow the resident to stare out over Juuban. She walks past the bed and bookshelves over to the window and takes in the view of the sprawling Juuban district, wondering what Kunzite thinks when he takes a look. With the morning sun shining over the city, Usagi is overcome with the beauty she has never taken a moment to notice.

She returns the the next day, though the reasoning for visiting eludes her. She tries to tell herself that she just wants another look around, but she has the layout memorized and drawn out. She has the date set, and she knows exactly how she will kill him. But it doesn’t stop her from exploring, learning more about her prey.

Kunzite has more books than she ever would have thought, in Japanese as well as English, in a variety of genres. He even has a water damaged copy of the final Sailor V manga. There’s no television, and no decorations, nothing to give him a sense of personality or style, or let Usagi get a idea of the man she wishes to end. On leaving she feels a swell of excitement in her chest. The next time she leaves this place, Kunzite will be dead.

 

\- -

 

Friday comes too quickly, not quickly enough. Usagi tries to be calm and unsuspecting, but even Nurse Tomoe has noticed and commented on the new glint that has set up shop in Usagi’s eyes. Worries grip her - will she make it out without leaving evidence? Will he be awake when she sneaks in? Will she succeed with her plan?

She arrives at his apartment at one in the morning, twisting the doorknob slowly to find that once more, the former general has left it unlocked. With each step into the apartment she takes in the disarray that was never there when she visited in the day. Dishes left out, half eaten meals still on his table, books and clothes lying on the floor. And the man himself, sleeping on the couch, still dressed in his clothes from the day, an empty whiskey glass dangling from his hand.

She carefully tiptoes over, grabbing a pillow off the floor, and bracing herself for this long awaited moment.

Her first glimpse of the general, causes her to halt and stare at the man, taking in each feature of his face, from his long pointed chin to his longer white hair that reflects the moonlight. And across his brow, there’s a single vertical wrinkle, that tells of old nightmares etched into his mind. His breathing is slow and steady as she raises the pillow, ready to smother the general to death.

But she stops, unable to bring it down. She tries to psyche herself up, reminding herself of all of the horrors he did, of the deaths of her friends. Of Mamoru. Of what he did to her.

It doesn’t help.

Instead, she sets the pillow down and watches him, listening to the steady rhythm of his breaths, her own breaths falling into time with his. She reaches out to his face, with a strange need to touch it and examine it, until she realizes that could wake him. She stands up and leaves, swearing to be back and finish the job.

She returns the following night, having transformed this time, with her weapon in hand, ready to eliminate him. But once again, she stares at his face, absorbs his scent of hyacinth and willow and old books and expensive whisky, and can’t find it in her to kill him. She wants to, she wants to make him suffer and struggle and feel the pain that she has lived with for the last fifteen years. But tonight is not right either.

Every night, she visits him, plotting to kill him, but slowly realizing she does not have the constitution to do it. She wonders if it’s her Hippocratic Oath that keeps her from harming the man. Maybe if she was Minako, she thinks, or Rei. They would have no troubles killing this man, but she can’t do it.

She brings poison one night. But before she can dump it in one of the cups on Kunzite’s table, she hears the man moan from a nightmare and watches as he grabs his chest. She stops, breath and movement, until he becomes still again. When the comforting rhythm of his breath begins once more, she can’t help herself and goes to check on him. Tear tracks stain the corners of his eyes. His forehead wrinkle has deepened. And his brow is still furrowed in pain. Usagi can’t do this, she now knows. She leaves, swearing she won’t return.

 

\- -

 

_Crown Game Center is full of people. She used to love it here, but now it’s just a distraction. A waste of time that she could be using to push forward. A memory she would like not to relive._

_Motoki waves to her, and heads to her with a key in hand. Together they leave the arcade and walk quietly toward Mamoru’s apartment. He knows as much as she bears telling him - what Mamoru was, who she and her friends were, how they died fighting evil. The pair don’t exchange words until they close the door and have taken a look at the apartment._

_“He wanted to be a doctor you know,” Motoki tells her. Usagi nods._

_“He would have been great,” she replies._

_“He loved you, in his own awkward way,” Motoki tells her._

_“He died protecting me,” she lies._

\- -

She spends a month, trying to forget the strange previous weeks, making excuses for her previous behavior. But in the end it doesn’t help when she sees that head of white hair again, walking away from the hospital.

It’s a compulsion, a drive, a need she can’t place, but she knows she needs to confront him. To make him answer for his crimes. To make him pay for what he did to Venus. To Mamoru. To her.

Stress builds up in her stomach, her palms moisten, her heart beats louder, harder and faster as the distance between them shortens. She composes speech after speech. She grabs the transformation brooch, deciding if she should transform or not, until she arrives at his door. With heavy shaking hand she knocks loudly on his door.

The final Shitennou opens it and stares at her. His eyes are marked with pain and sadness as they connect with hers.

“Princess,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

His voice holds a pain that had only been hinted at by his eyes, by the sleeping face she’d spent too many nights watching. He sounds nothing like he did years ago. And she can feel it. She can feel the pain radiating off him with that smell of hyacinth and willow that she has become accustomed too.

She responds to his question by wrapping a hand around his neck and pulling the general’s face to hers, smashing her lips against his.

Usagi has never given a kiss to another, aside from her family and the small peck on Mamoru’s cheek after his death. This one is hungry with a need that she has never felt. She can sense a hesitation from Kunzite, though it fades when his eyes close and he gives in to her physical request. His hands slide around her slim body, and pull her to him and inside the apartment. Hands explore each other, from his hair to her hips, removing clothing and hairpins and anything in their way. Greedy, needy kisses exchange between the two in a strange eager dance of power and lust. When his lips finally leave hers to travel down her slender delicate neck, she emits a moan full of every emotion she has felt.

She needs this.

She needs him.

They move to his couch, to the floor, discarding the last physical barriers between themselves. And as she slides down his hard length, taking him into her for the first time, she lets out another moan that drives him to sit up and drag his nails along her back. It drives them to a new rhythm, building a pleasure that ripples through her with intensity that she has never once guessed at. She feels herself grip him tightly and lets out a cry, to hear him join her with his own.

 

\- -

 

He falls asleep almost the instant he lies back down, leaving Usagi to the cold realization of what just occurred. She stands up, pulling her skirt and blouse on quicker than she had ever transformed. Moving to leave, she can’t help but take one more look back at the general, his naked body streaked with sweat and his hair tangled in all directions, but his usually pained expression replaced with one of relief.

She grabs the blanket from the couch and lays it gently over his body, before she leaves.

The next few days overwhelm her mind with confusion. Questions about why she did it, why he accepted it, haunt her. She should feel disgusted, regretful, guilty, but she doesn’t. If Mamoru, Endymion, were here, this would have never happened, she thinks.

But Mamoru is long dead. And it did happen.

So she hold no regret. Or guilt.

Which is why, when the week ends and she finds herself at Kunzite’s door again, she is not surprised. He lets her in, and when he opens his mouth to speak to her, she stops him with her own. Once again, their hands shed their clothes and they move to the floor intertwining their bodies in a frantic desire that she cannot explain. And once more, when they finish, she dresses and leaves without a word.

It’s cruel and unfair that she treats him as a tool for her pleasure, she knows, but she can’t speak to him without fear of what might come out. She knows they should talk, about what he did, about what she did, about their trysts, about the annoying, lingering feeling in her chest when she thinks about him. About her confusion.

That confusion, compiled with her rising emotions and an extra rough shift at work, where she loses a patient that she fought for hours to save, stresses her to the point where she cries for the first time since Rei’s death. The hospital sends her home for the day, but her legs do not carry her home. Instead, she finds herself again at Kunzite’s door.

He brings her inside, his arm wrapped around her tiny form as each sob makes her body shudder. She clutches onto his shirt as he leads her to his couch, where he keeps a tight hold on her until her tears begin to subside. With a few sniffles, she turns her face up to his, eyes red and full of pain. In that moment, she cannot, will not, deny the need for him and she brings her face to his and kisses him.

However, he surprises her, by sliding an arm under her legs and lifting her up, never breaking the kiss. He carries her to his room, the light from the city below illuminating the bed where he sets her down gently, kissing her eyes, her nose, her neck. She accepts this, running her hands through his silver hair.

 

\- -

 

The first thing she notices when she awakens is how tightly his arms are wrapped around her. She gently shifts, attempting to escape his arms before he wakes. But she hears a small voice coming from the man and looking up she realizes he has been crying again, repeating a word small and soft. It takes her a moment before she realizes that he is crying ‘Venus.’

She stops shuffling, stops trying to get away, and instead she pushes her body snugly against his own. It is that instant, with that word that she understands. Why he held her the night before without questions. Why he gave into her advances. Why he moaned and cried out during sleep. Why his brow was always furrowed. Why she couldn’t kill him.

Usagi wraps her arms around him, and then watches his face smooth over, a peaceful beauty returning to his face. She reaches up to touch his face, to trace the lines and curves as she had wanted to weeks ago. She traces his cheeks and eyebrows and lips, taking in the smoothness of his skin and the gentleness of his features.

His eyes flutter open and focus on her, surprised that she is still there. She reaches up to kiss his cheek before she speaks her first words to him.

“What were you dreaming about?”

His eyes look away, as he tells her about the nightmare - a terrible memory from the Silver Millennium where he tricks and kills Venus at the end of the war - a nightmare that has replayed nearly every night since the Dark Kingdom was destroyed. He fights to hold back the tears again, and Usagi raises her hand to his cheek to give him some comfort, whispering his name, but it only succeeds in bringing out the tears.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, “I’m so sorry.” The apology is unexpected, and Usagi listens closely to him. He apologizes for his actions during the Silver Millennium, for what he did under Beryl, for attacking and tricking her and her friends. And with a final sob, he apologizes for taking Mamoru away from her.

She buries her face in his chest, not wanting him to see her own tears. After many moments, she chokes out. “I forgive you.”

They spend the next hour nearly silent, except for a few sobs here and there, tightly entwined until a small gurgle from Kunzite’s stomach hints that both of them need sustenance. They dress, her in his dress shirt and he in a pair of pants from the previous night, before heading to his kitchen, where he prepares a pair of omelettes.

She asks how he survived the fall of the Dark Kingdom, a question that had haunted her since she had seen him nearly three months ago. He admits that he nearly didn’t - that Endymion had stabbed him shortly after he had sent the senshi through the dimensional rift. He avoids looking at her when he says this. He continues to tell her that he was nursing his wounds when the Dark Kingdom started to disintegrate. He was lucky enough to make it to Tokyo, before the last portal collapsed.

He woke up two days later in the hospital with family and friends he didn’t recognize.

This confuses Usagi, but Kunzite is kind enough to explain that he was born here in Juuban, and when the Dark Kingdom was reformed, he was captured and brainwashed, destroying any memories of his youth. The only thing he has from his past, he admits, is his name - Saito Sakuya.

It’s not what she’s expecting, but it fits him. She tells him that her name is Tsukino Usagi.

 

\- -

 

They exchange further details. Ages, birthdays, favorite colors, music, schooling. He tells her he is a paralegal at his law firm. Usagi responds that she is a doctor, which he admits he had been aware of since heading to the ER for a terrible Karaoke incident. This shocks Usagi, as she realizes he had been aware of her, and he continues to tell her that he had asked after her a few times.

She apologizes for missing him, but the apology she makes only brings forth more apologies for what she had done. He accepts her apologies, though he doesn’t ask for more details. The conversation segues back to the destruction of the Dark Kingdom, and Kunzite asks for the circumstances of Venus’s death. Usagi’s demeanor goes cold as she admits Venus had killed Beryl with a sword through the throat, only to have Endymion stab her in the back moments later.

Usagi looks down at her plate before she continues, a look of pure vitriol filling her face.

“I killed Endymion.”

She has never said these words out loud to anyone. She did not tell Motoki, she never even told Luna. “He killed Ami, and Minako. He would have killed me too. I should have just let him.”

Tears become fresh in her eyes again and the words fall out of her mouth, and she doesn’t even try to stop them. She knows that if anyone can understand it will be Kunzite. She tells him that she has wanted to die since she came back. That she didn’t care about anything, about her future, herself, how she only even became a doctor because she owed it to her friends. How she kept living because Rei told her to.

“And then I saw you, and I was angry that you lived and they were dead and I wanted…” but she can’t speak anymore. The tears overtake her voice, and he moves to hold her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She sobs in his arms, and he strokes her hair to comfort her, whispering words of forgiveness.

When she finally pulls away, he looks in her eyes and admits he wanted to die too.

Amidst the tears and admissions, they finish their meal, and Usagi tells him that she should probably head home. He gives her a forlorn smile, as if to say he knew this couldn’t last, but he doesn’t look at her. But she takes a hold of her hand, bringing his eyes to meet hers, and for the first time in years, Usagi smiles.

“Do you mind... if I came by later?”

 

\- -

 

She drops by everyday after work. Sometimes they talk about their days or the Silver Millennium. Other times, they fuck on the couch or the floor or the kitchen table. Sometimes they just hold each other to get through the nightmares or darkness that plagues them. But they grow, they grow together, and better. He laughs and she smiles.

They bring out the best in each other. He drags her to Karaoke, and she forces him to meet her cats. Her parents thank him for making her happy. His parents thank her for bringing him back to them. Occasionally when she stays the night, she stays awake, running her fingers through his hair. And in the morning, he helps her tie her hair back into her signature buns.

Sometimes, in the heat of passion, he cries out for Venus and she for Endymion, but neither blames nor judges the other.

Six months before her thirtieth birthday, she finds out she is expecting. When she shocks Kunzite with the news, he allows himself a moment to accept it before lifting her up and suggesting that she move in with him. Usagi agrees. Their daughter is born on Usagi’s birthday, robust and healthy and given the only name they considered. As she watches him hold the newborn Minako, singing softly a song that he remembers from the Silver Millennium, the weight of Rei’s words lift off her and she knows this was what was meant. Kunzite looks back at her and gives her a smile.

When they are alone, she calls him Kunzite, and he calls her Princess. They whisper names of their lost loves. They remind each other of the past. But they never say I love you to each other. They never need to. They have trust. Happiness. They have each other, and they know it has resurrected them.

 

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, Three years since I last published anything here? This fic came about while I was writing another fic, and I couldn't get the Usagi/Kunzite pair out of my head. Hopefully I'll finish that one up soon for you to see.


End file.
